Best of
by Ophium
Summary: Various stories about different episodes, told from the point of view of different characters. The latest one is a waitress POV, set after the last scene in 4.10. Anna finds a way to say goodbye.
1. Author's notes

**Author's notes**

These are not new stories. I've posted them before, awhile back. However, only now have I found the time to go back and give them a 'new-dressing', 'paint' some new colors.

I've correct a few things, taken out a few paragraphs here, add a few new ones there. If you've read them before and like them, give them a go again because I really think they're better now. If you never read them, please be my guest. I've been told that they're not bad. Either way, enjoy them and let me know what you think. Reviews are love, and really, all we need is love!


	2. BROKEN – A tale of fairness and maybes

_**Many, many thanks to katriel1987 for beta-ing this story. Any residual mistake is not her fault, it's because of my stuborn head.**_

**Summary**: A sort of missing scene from the episode Faith, back in season 1. The brothers as seen from the eyes of a complete stranger.  
**Genre**: Episode tag

**Word Count**: 4700

**Rating**: K+

**Spoilers**: Faith

**Warnings: **Mild language

**Disclaimer**: I dreamed that I owned the boys and everything Supernatural related… then I woke up and it was gone.

**BROKEN – A tale of fairness and maybes**

It's easier when they're jerks, because you don't let your barriers down near a jerk, on account of the danger of them… well, jerk you around. But the thing is, they rarely are, so it never gets easy. And when they don't even belong there all together, it just makes it harder.

It's not about illness being fair to some and not others. It's not about anyone deserving to be sick. It's about being a time and place for everything. Even illness.

You don't see many elderly citizens with chickenpox, and even though it happens, it always strikes you as odd; you don't see many kids in a cardiology department, yet, sadly, it happens. It still strikes you as odd… as wrong. As unfair.

I've worked in the same department of this hospital for nearly fifteen years now, except for the two brief months I tried the pediatric version of it and discovered that I wasn't cut out for it. You see, it's all about the fairness of things, and to me, it's only fair that our hearts get tired and end up failing when we're old and have already used them up to live our life.

There's nothing fair about looking into a sick kid's eyes and seeing the kind of fear that only comes from disease; or that deep sense of betrayal that you can only feel when you've been cheated out of something. You can't quite put your finger on it, but you know that it's something you don't deserve to lose.

Because them, those kids, they were dealt a lousy hand in the fate game, even before they knew how to play. Damn! Some even before they knew they were playing. It's even worse with the babies, the ones who don't even understand why they don't get a chance at a normal life like everybody else.

It just sucks.

Fifteen years of dealing with the big cliché that everything that's good must come to an end. Years of struggling to find a way to be there for my patients, without getting lured in to giving too much of myself. Because if each patient that dies takes a little piece of me with him when he goes, then all too soon I'll be left with nothing more to give. And that is not why I signed up for this life.

It's not a big yard, and some of the patients have been with us so many times on and off that we know them by first name, know their grandkids' names, know why they're here. After coming here a couple of times, they stop being the 'myocarditis in bed seven' or the 'AMI with triple bypass in bed two' and they become 'Mr. Norris with the three cats' and 'Mrs. Livingston with the cute nephew'. It's a good evolution, but a bad prognosis.

A couple of them are 'first warning' material, the ones that thought they were immortal and that eating deep-fry dishes and cheeseburgers for breakfast would never come back to bite them in the ass… or the heart. They are surprise balls. The ones you want out of here before you can learn their first name.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

That particular day had started surprisingly well. I had woke up two minutes before the alarm clock could start screaming at me, the sunlight that was coming in between the barely-closed curtains was still gentle enough to not hurt my eyes and my kid got out of bed at first call. Getting ready for work and dropping Andy off at school flashed by in a blur of normalcy and habit and the search for a parking space only took twenty minutes. Trust me when I tell you that this is a very good thing.

When I arrived at my station, everyone was already talking about him. The guy in bed eleven. The hero. The one that looked like a fallen angel. Ralph Burkovitz, the poor kid.

It was the "poor kid" part that soured the undigested remains of my recent breakfast inside my stomach.

From what I was told, he'd been brought directly from the ER the previous day, suffering from acute heart failure, triggered by a massive electric shock. His heart, like any other electrical device, had just fried. He had, however, managed to save two little kids in the process.

I had heard all about little James and Olivia Woodenhill. Small town, everyone had heard about them, about the despair their parents felt, not knowing what had happened to their kids. Every other parent in town was scared shitless that the same thing could happen to theirs. Everyone praying thanks that it hadn't been their kid, everyone praying for a miracle.

He had saved those two kids. From what I could tell of his condition, we couldn't even fix his heart to pay him back.

I left their tale of how this person had heard from that other person, who had heard from someone else, of what had happened, and picked up my charts. I knew how this particular tale could end up and the more I heard about how wonderful this guy was, the harder it would be to watch him go, little by little. I was late for my eight o'clock vitals check round and, because fate can be such a bitch, bed eleven was on my charts.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

I could've taken a wild guess at what I would find just from what I had heard at the nurse' station about 'bed eleven'. I knew that he was young from their 'poor boy' talk, but I had figured that he was old enough to be in the adult cardiac unit. The 'fallen angel' crap I figured that I could either blame on him being handsome and having impressed the younger nurses, or the fact that he had in fact acted as one towards those children. I was a bit off the mark on both accounts. And I knew that he would be feeling like crap because… well, because that's what heart failure makes you feel like.

I couldn't really claim to know how he was feeling, but I could venture an educated guess. Awhile back I broke the radius bone in my left arm. It rendered my arm and left hand utterly useless for the entire time I had to wear that damn cast. I can still remember how it was to not be able to use a part of my body- a part that I hadn't even realized how much I needed for my day-to-day tasks until I had to make do without it.

I figured that, at such a young age, the guy in bed eleven was probably feeling the same thing. Only, instead of an arm, it was his whole body that was 'broken'. Never mind the strain such an electric discharge would've placed on his whole musculature under, making his entire body feel like it had been thoroughly beaten. The really bad part was the fact that, once the heart is no longer strong enough to get the rest of the body working, the body can't do anything but struggle along, slowly shutting down, system by system.

Gestures that yesterday were made with little thought behind them, had to be carefully planned now; breathing that was taken for granted before was now a lottery, never sure when the last breath would really be the last one.

To be honest, if someone had dumped something like that in my lap overnight, I'd be freaking out, using all of my fading strength to climb the walls.

The guy- scratch that- the kid in bed eleven was a picture of calmness. No, not calmness… serenity.

I had to double-check my chart, making sure that I'd gotten his age right. He didn't look twenty-six. He didn't look like he belonged in the adult cardiac unit at all.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Even from a distance I could see that he was a full grown man, a big man at that, from what I could tell from the space he took on that hospital bed.

But still, there was something undeniably childish about him. Maybe it was the slight turn of his head, his face unconsciously seeking the warmth of sunlight coming through the side window, or maybe it was the splash of freckles over his cheeks and nose, or maybe just something about the way one of his hands was twisted around the blankets around his chest, searching for comfort in the harsh fabric. Something about him screamed lost boy too loud to leave me unaffected.

I was quick to take note of the readings on his monitor and check the levels in his morphine drip and saline. Not much in the way of medication there; just trying to make him feel more comfortable. My work was interrupted by a deep sigh, coming from behind me.

"Can I help you?" I asked the tall kid with floppy brown hair who stood by the door.

At first I thought that maybe he was lost, because the other bed in this room was empty and certainly this kid was looking for a sick grandparent, or maybe even a parent. The sad, lost look in his eyes told me how wrong I was.

"How's my brother doing?"

I couldn't help to give a fleeting look between the blondish, round faced sleeping man to the sharp angled face of the brunet in front of me. Brothers, humm? Never would've guessed.

"Have the doctors talked to you yet?" I asked, not wanting to say anything that would add more sadness to those soulful eyes.

He just nodded.

Of course they had. I knew the look this kid was directing at the sleeping man in bed eleven. It was the look of someone who was trying to commit an image to memory, the look of someone not ready to let go. Of course he knew.

"He's comfortable for the time being," I explained, feeling that he didn't needed details about blood pressure and barely controlled arrhythmias. "I'll be out of your way in no time."

To my surprise, he actually took a step back.

"No, it's ok," he said quickly, quietly, afraid to wake the sleeping brother. "I have to go anyway, stuff to do…" he added, already half way to the exit, "… I'll come back later. If he wakes up tell him that…"

he never finished the sentence, turning absent minded and making a quick exit. Before he was out the unit's door, I could have sworn that I saw his hand reach for his face to wipe something away, but he disappeared too fast for me to be sure. What the hell had happened here?

"Don't worry… that Sasquatch knows the freaky amount of space that he occupies. He's just making sure that there's room left for you to work."

The quiet, slightly raspy voice could've only come from the sleeping man, who was not so asleep after all. Had he been faking it?

"Do you want me to call him back?" I asked, nearing the young man, _Ralph_ I reminded myself.

I could see the resemblance between the two brothers now. Soulful, beautiful sad eyes. They both had them.

The amount of emotions that flickered through Ralph's green eyes then left me slightly out of breath. 'Do you want me to call him back?' Such a simple question it was for most people, and yet for this young man, it was enough to bring out unbelievable depths of sorrow, longing, love and sadness to the surface, feelings that I thought to be too complicate for such a simple question.

As quickly as it had surfaced, one blink and it was gone, replaced by an indifference that looked both practiced and incredibly fake on his face.

"Nah… he'll be around again."

It was mesmerizing to watch, the way his mouth said one thing and his expressive eyes said the exact opposite words. Words like 'stay' and 'hold me' and 'I'm scared', normal words, expected words that I somehow knew he would never say, not because he was too proud to say them, but because he wasn't used to them.

I was about to ask him if he needed anything else, but gave up when I realized that his eyes were once again closed. I couldn't tell if he was faking it again to avoid me like he had avoided his brother. But this time, I was sure that it was a tear I saw sliding down the side of his pale face.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

The rumour mill ran wild all through that day. One of the other people working here had a cousin who worked in the police station. As it was, the rescue of the two kids had made the front page in that morning's paper. I was filling out my charts with all the data I had been collecting from the various beds and couldn't help overhearing them.

"Fred said that those kids were sooo lucky. He can't even believe it's possible," Jenny, barely out of college, said excitedly. "Apparently, some years back, the same thing happened to a bunch of kids in several towns around here."

"What happened to those kids?" One of the more eager members of her audience asked.

"It's a really creepy story, if you ask me. Kids went missing and some were never found. The ones they did find were in an old abandoned basement, but by the time someone got to them, it was already too late. Fred didn't see it, it was before his time in the force, but he was told that it looked like something had fed on them," she whispered, as if talking in a lower voice made those poor kids any less dead.

"Jesus!"

"Yeah… Fred said that the other guys at the station were all thinking that the Woodenhill kids were as good as gone too, given what they knew. It was nothing short of a freaking miracle that bed eleven happened to be passing by that specific house and heard the kids screaming."

"Wow!"

"Oh, but you don't even know the best part yet," Jenny said, lowering her voice to a conspiring tone.

Despite my best efforts to stay out of this, I found myself walking closer to the group to collect a form for which I had no use whatsoever. It did allow me to hear Jenny's words better, though.

"The kids said they weren't alone in that basement where they were found… that something had taken them there."

"Something… not someone?"

"No, you heard right. They were too scared to give the cops a proper description, but they talked about it like it was some kind of monster. From what they said, the big brother carried them out while the other one stood behind to fight the thing… and that's when it happen'."

"Double wow!… Wait, isn't the big brother the one that's in bed eleven?"

"No, that's the older brother… I was talking about the really big guy that was here before."

"Well, they look the same age to me… and so cute, even the one that's sick. You sure they're brothers? Damn good genes those parents had…"

"Not the point… this is so big that Fred said the Mayor's even considering giving these guys some kind of medal… you know, if they can rush the paperwork before the guy in bed eleven… well, you know."

"This is so unfair… I mean, if this is how good deeds are repaid, I'm done with helping old ladies across the street. The guy's a freaking hero and this is how Karma pays him back?"

"Yeah, totally sucks, but you know, Karma doesn't really work like that…"

I couldn't find any more reasons to stick around, so I never did discover how Jenny thought Karma worked, but she was right about one thing… this whole thing sucked.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

I know myself fairly well, and I knew how hard it was when I grew attached to any of the patients. And I damn well knew what was in stored for this kid, so I damn well knew that the smart thing for me to do was to keep my distance and see him only as a patient, as a damaged heart, as one more chart in my list of charts to manage. Switch i.v. drip, check morphine dose, and collect vitals that only proved he wasn't getting any better.

It was a perfect plan but it was doomed to fail every time I heard one more detail about how he had come to be there. It was a plan that went down the toilet every time that I entered his room and looked at his eyes. I don't remember much of what he said to me in those times, and it really didn't matter. His words never matched what his eyes were saying anyway and it was his eyes that told me everything about him and his life.

How was that even possible?

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

I'de been feeling angry with lots of things lately, but mostly, I'de been angry about the fairness of things. Or more to the point, the unfairness of things. Little things. Big things. Tossing and turning in my bed that night, thinking about the new patient, hadn't helped matters one bit.

I mean, was it fair that my mom didn't go to my wedding because she didn't want me to change towns? Or that my husband died, ten years ago, and left me with a small child to raise? Was it fair, last night in the supermarket, when I let that old guy go ahead of me, just for him to take the last piece of ham that I had my eye on? Was it fair that this kid, with a whole life ahead of him, had stumbled into our town for no apparent reason, only to get served with a death sentence?

As I drove to work the next morning, I reached the conclusion that life wasn't fair at all, that I was too tired to deal with this and that this could possibly be the patient that made me lose my mind. I had a headache too, and that wasn't fair either.

Still, fair or not fair, I saw him as soon as I turned onto the hospital' street. The fallen angel, the reason for my impending insanity, the town's very own hero, right there on the sidewalk, gripping the lamppost like it was the only thing keeping him upright, looking impossibly fragile and lost. And that too wasn't fair, because as soon as I pulled over next to him, intending to tear him a new one for being out of his bed, all it took was one look into his tired eyes and I knew that I would do whatever he asked me to.

"Hi there," he greeted me, looking for all purposes like he didn't have a care in the world. The words, however, lacked the energy usually associated with them.

"Hi yourself. Out for a stroll?" I said in the same tone. Uncompromising.

"Got tired of the view… thought I might as well check out the rest of the place," he replied, as truthfully as a long-nosed Pinocchio.

His legs must've been made of wood too, because the moment he tried to let go of the lamppost and walk away, they locked up and he came dangerously close to taking a nosedive. He grabbed the post again, nonchalantly, like it had been his intention all along.

Intellectually, I knew he shouldn't be out of the hospital, and I was sure that no sane - or insane for that matter - doctor had authorized his release this soon. Emotionally, I felt that whatever little time he had left, he should be spending it with his family, not with us.

So, I couldn't really blame him for leaving against medical advice, whether he'd done it with all the proper bureaucracy to cover our asses signed, or had simply escaped. I didn't know, and I really, really didn't want to find out because my next words would make me guilty either way. "Need a ride somewhere?"

He nodded slowly. I was sure that the gratefulness in his smile was more for me not ratting him out than for my offer to drive him somewhere. I was also sure that he would give me the address of his brother's motel, the one just around the corner where we all knew he was staying.

Once more I was wrong.

"Is there a bus station somewhere near here?"

I blinked, certain that I had either heard him wrong or that he was having a laugh at my expense. "Bus station?"

He nodded again, not meeting my inquisitive eyes.

"Sure," I agreed slowly, unlocking my car doors. "Hop in." Because at this point, it was either my car' seats or the street floor.

He let himself drop in the front seat with a tired sigh and hugged the large clothes he was wearing closer to his body. Where had he gotten those?

The professional in me took over for a couple of seconds. He looked terribly pasty, with black smudges of black under his eyes that did not go well with his bright green gaze. Even across from him I could feel the small tremors that he was trying to control, feeling like miniature earth quakes in the front seat, leaving me to wonder if he was cold or if it was something else. I really should take him back. I raised the temperature of the heater instead.

It really was a small town and just five minutes later, we stopped in front of the bus station. "This is it," I announced needlessly, just to break the silence. "Your brother's waiting in there for you?" I asked, finding the idea strange in itself, but not wanting to believe any other option. The car his brother had been driving around was another legend all in itself.

"Not really," he said in a quiet voice, bracing himself to leave the hot comfort of my car.

I sighed against my best advice. Shook my head. Counted to ten and looked at him.

"He doesn't even know you left the hospital, does he?"

I saw him building a lie in his head even before he turned to look at me. And then, just as quickly, he gave up and graced me with a sincerity that I somehow knew he rarely gave to total strangers. No idea why, but it made me feel special.

"I don't want him around when it happens," he whispered.

I wanted to look away, afraid that he would mistake the sorrow in my eyes for pity and leave the car, but I didn't, and he didn't either. Instead, he waited for me, someone that he'd never met before, to tell him that he was making the right decision by sparing his little brother the trauma of watching his big brother die. But his eyes… his eyes were once again betraying him. His eyes were telling me he was truly terrified of dying alone. No one should die alone.

Somehow I knew it was up to me to convince this kid, this stranger, that it was all right to do the selfish thing once in a while.

"I don't know your brother," I began slowly, weighting each word, scared shitless of saying the wrong thing. "But I doubt he would ever forgive you if you did something like that."

I waited, anxious to see if this was when he would yell at me to mind my own business and slam my car door on his way out. He stayed silent, watching the other cars pass us by. Up ahead, the traffic light changed to green.

So I went on. "My husband was killed in a construction accident, died instantly," I said, repeating the words that had taken me three years to voice. "It was over ten years ago and not a day goes by that I don't wish that I'd had time to tell him one more time how much I loved him. Not a day goes by that I don't wish that my face and his son's face were the last ones he saw before he closed his eyes."

Ten years later, and talking about it still brought tears to my eyes. I looked anywhere but at the stranger inside my car, the emotions too raw to share. The change in his breathing made me look back at him, worried that his heart had chosen that precise moment to crap out on us.

I caught the quick movement of his hand as he finished wiping his face, a gesture so similar to his brother's that it made me smile. The gesture, however, did nothing to hide the moisture still leaking from his eyes. "Can you do me one more favour?" He asked in a calm voice, meeting my eyes with nothing more to hide.

"Sure."

"Moterhead Motel… could you drop me there?"

I arrived at work really, really late that morning, but late as I was I couldn't keep the smile off my face.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

My thoughts rarely went back to Ralph Burkovitz, not after the day I drove him to meet his brother. A year went by in no time at all and, even thought I hadn't been thinking about it, I knew that he was probably dead by now.

So, when I walked into a road restaurant in Milwaukee to meet my sister for lunch, I knew that the young man that I was seeing- seating by the corner table, wolfing down a large cheeseburger while talking to a tall man seated in front of him- couldn't possibly be Ralph.

As if sensing my eyes on him, not-Ralph paused between bites and met my gaze. Even from that distance, I could tell his eyes were the same colour as those of the Ralph I had known. For a moment, I thought he too had recognized me. For a moment his green eyes seemed to smile at me. But then they flickered back to the man in front of him, who called him Dean, and just like that the moment passed.

I knew I would wonder, later, if it would've been better to just approach him and settle my doubts then and there. To suffer the momentary embarrassment of interrupting two complete strangers in order to make sure that I wasn't really seeing dead people. To be certain that Ralph and Dean weren't the same man.

I never approached him, and I couldn't say that I was sorry about it either. It was a nice uncertainty to live with, the possibility that maybe the kind young man who had arrived from nowhere to save two young kids hadn't died after all. The possibility that maybe some things were still fair, that maybe, just maybe, there really were angels out there, watching over us.

"Hey, Mary, we gonna order or what?" My sister grumbled, calling me back to reality.

I looked back at her, forgetting about the two strangers. "Sure thing… I think I'll have a cheeseburger."

The end


	3. GOLIATHS, TROLLS AND OTHER HUMAN MONSTER

**Summary**: Because not all of those catcalls were for Sam. This time, it's all about Dean. Sam's POV during an alternative version of 'Folsom prison blues'

**Genre**: Episode tag

**Word Count**: 5800  
**Rating**: T

**Spoilers**: Everything up to 'Folsom prison blues'

**Warnings: **Liberal use of the f-word. Mention of mature themes.

**Disclaimer**: I dreamed that I owned the boys and everything Supernatural related… then I woke up and it was gone.

**GOLIATHS, TROLLS AND OTHER HUMAN MONSTERS**

Whoever said that idiocy is a very dangerous thing was either a brilliant genius or the proud relative of an idiot brother, just like me.

As far as idiocy goes, this has got to be the most idiotic thing that we've ever, EVER done. I mean, most people - normal people - try to stay clear from anything that might land them in jail. Most people - normal people wanted by the police - are extra careful in staying as far as they can from anything near white and blue.

My brother, the idiot, thought that it was a genius move to trigger an alarm, while braking and entering a museum, so that the police could come and arrest us. On purpose.

His reasoning? If they're doing exactly what we want them to do, then it's not a bad thing for them to put the cuffs on us and send us straight to prison. If we do it on purpose, then it's not stupid to hand yourself over for extradition to another state where years and years of prison time or possible death awaits you!

No. This is us, getting them, exactly where we want them.

The same guy that goes on and on about the waste of time and money it is to use 'costumes' for any particular job, is willing to play the prisoner's part to catch some ghost that's been wasting cons in some prison where a friend of dad's happens to work. Not to mention that this is the same guy that was busting my balls, nearly going nuts just from staying inside a hotel room for three freaking days. With magic fingers' beds!

I can't wait to see him climb the walls of a tiny, windowless prison cell.

Every single moment and contingency was carefully planned and taken in account before we went in. Or at least as far as we could plan without the use of a crystal ball and freaking tea leafs.

Deacon, dad's friend and hopefully our foolproof escape plan, gave us a play-by-play of everything that went on inside his prison, everything that we could expect as inmates. Everything that we were supposed to avoid.

He warned us about the usual stuff: don't let yourself get cornered, don't look weak, don't turn your back on an unfriendly face and don't get yourself mistaken for a woman.

None of it was news to either Dean or me, but we both appreciated Deacon's intentions of keeping us safe. Dean had half joked about haircuts and beards, to which he was told to fuck off and the matter was dropped. Either way, don't think it would've helped much.

We weren't going in to mingle; we had no intentions of making friends. I would've avoid talking to anyone altogether, if the case didn't needed further investigation from the inside.

Myth or myth, showers and their extracurricular activities between inmates were something that we both agreed to NOT put to a test while inside. When it's your own ass on the line, all those 'reaching for the soap' jokes to lose their funny pretty fast. This job shouldn't take more than three days. This job COULDN'T take more than three days. We could deal with our own BO's for that long.

808080808080808080808

No matter how prepared we were, no matter how secure Deacon had made our escape, this job still had 'shit happens' written all over it. I was just waiting for it to hit the fan.

The safest thing to do while inside would be to stay in each other's view the whole time, covering our respective backs from all unforeseen troubles, but something like that was near impossible to achieve. For starters, Deacon had his hands tied when it came to the cells we end up in.

All the new inmates were assigned cots by alphabetic order and, even though our last name is the same, there was nothing to be done about the distance that goes between a 'D' and an 'S'. Dean ended up with an oily extra from 'Dawn of the dead'. I ended up with Goliath, the creepy giant.

Then, there was the matter of being the new guys, a label from which not Deacon, the president or God Himself could rid us of that easily.

In some weird way, the same rules that had made our lives miserable in almost every new school that we've ever been to, seemed to apply in here as well. No matter what state we were in, no matter how small the school was, there always seemed to be a group of bullies around, whose favorite sport was to pick on the new kid. And if the new kid was geeky and gangly like I used to be, the picking on only got worse.

Some things never really change.

Then too, Dean would step between the bullies and me, even after I turned big enough to do it myself. Most of the time Dean spent in detention when we were in high school was because of that. In here, it lands him in solitary.

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In the end, it was best for Dean to spend his first night in prison trapped inside a solitary cell. Aside from murderous ghostly visits, it was a lot safer for him.

I spend my night lying awake in my bunk, haunted by terrible 'what ifs' and 'maybes' that my mind was coming up with and trying to ignore the sounds around me. The expression 'sounds from hell' comes to mind and the only thing I can think of is that this isn't even one of the worst prisons that we could've end up in.

I looked up its history before we got ourselves arrested, part as research for our ghost, part to try and figure exactly where Dean's was getting us in to. I found out the usual stories of violence, murders, uprisings and riots, but compared to other places, there really weren't that many.

It was still, however, a place where people were send to because they had some kind of debt to pay to society; a place where you're more likely to find violent people than at the local mall; a place where, no matter what crime you've committed outside, you're judged by the way you look, by the way you act, by the race you belong to, by whom you talk to, whom you piss off.

Politically correct stays outside the gates and the rule of thumb inside is 'know your place, defend it or get fucked'. Five minutes inside and, despite the fact that neither Dean nor me had ever seen the inside of a prison, we already knew which boundaries not to break and which to stick to.

It was kind of a paradox, really. You go in knowing that you have to keep a low profile and you don't wanna raise any trouble that might put you in the spotlight, because being in the spotlight is bad. However, you can't achieve this without defending your place, most likely in a violent way, which automatically blows your low profile, gets you in trouble and most certainly, gets you in the damn spotlight.

Dean's brawl in the canteen with 'mister bad mood' might've landed him in solitary, but managed to take us out of the pussies list. Or at least, took him out of that list. For all I know, I might have to battle my own troll if I want out too. I don't particularly care.

The second fight was a distraction. An easy, even if painful, way to get all eyes on my brother so that I could slip in to the kitchen unnoticed. It worked like a charm, for long enough to allow me to get what I needed from the kitchen, use the air ducts to reach the old cell blocks and burn that bloody mattress.

It also put Dean in the spotlight again.

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You can hear very disturbing things just from crossing the yard from one end to the other. And given what Dean and I do for a living, there's disturbing and there's DISTURBING.

Hearing two guys comparing notes on how to gut a guy, without spilling gunk on their clothes, is maybe a three on my scale.

Seeing some guy pimp out his terrified, younger-than-me-cellmate, in exchange for dope, that's probably a six, with a side of yuck.

Listening to a couple of guys planning on getting the drop on the new fish with the 'cock sucking' mouth and realize that they're not talking about aquariums but about your own brother because they, oh so discreetly, fuck him with their eyes the second he steps in the yard, that just blows off the scale.

I could possibly allege ignorance of what the hell they were talking about, if they hadn't been so damn blunt and graphic about it. I mean, yeah I can tell that Dean's the kind of guy that physically attracts people, but it's usually female people. Besides, no matter how much of a player I realize him to be, it's always complicated to see your own family members as sexual beings. It's just wrong.

I look at Dean now, trying to get pass the fact that this is the guy responsible for that awful smell inside the car everytime he eats fried onions; or that this is the guy that still leaves his wet towels all over the bathroom floor, even though he knows that he might have to use them again because the cleaning crew wont even come near our room. I look at my brother and see the guy that- to my unending shame - proclaims, on the rare occasions when he allows himself to cross the line from happily buzzed to pissing drunk, to have wiped my ass clean too many times. Sometimes he remembers to add my not being bigger than his forearm at the time. Sometimes he just wants to see me embarrassed.

I try to take my mind off the hunt and our need to get far, far away from here and Henricksen and I force myself to see Dean through the eyes of a stranger. I try to see Dean through the eyes of those, obvious horny and not that picky, guys.

Dean's just coming from the infirmary and his face kind of looks like that villain guy from Batman, Two-Face. One side of his face is pale while the other is going for the whole American flag motif, white, red and blue. All he's missing is the stars.

I focus on the pout-y lips that he has always denied and the girly-curly eyelashes that I used to make fun of when we were kids and suddenly I realize that this isn't funny, this is not funny at all.

With a sinking feeling I realize that to these guys, locked up in here for who-knows how long, Dean's lips might look as good or better than Angelina Jolie's and a lot more at hand than hers will ever be.

The images that that realization spurs, aided by the triple X rated late night films that those inmates were daydreaming about, are so disturbing that I think I might've actually gasped out loud, because Dean looks at me with a 'what?' look on his face and boy, why? Why does that bruise in his face had to be just enough to highlight Dean's eyes in such a way that makes it look like he's wearing eyeliner?

This ain't good. This is so past screwed up that its' starting to look screwed down, screwed left and screwed right, all rolled up in to one big fucked.

My heart's hammering inside my chest as I grab him by his sleeve and drag him away from prying eyes, wishing for once to be even bigger so that I could just hide him inside my pocket. Ghost or no ghost, I've got to take Dean out of here now.

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The idiot, of course, wants to stay. Because, really, who wouldn't?

Who in its perfect mind says that they want to stay INSIDE a prison? Dean's either incredible blind to what's going on around him, or he's incredible brave about the whole thing, which leads me back to being an idiot.

Ok, granted, I burned the wrong remains so, technically, the job's not finished and we do always try our best to finish the job. But how do you explain to your own and only brother - in a clear enough manner, without having to do therapy for the rest of your life - that because there are one too many guys in here wanting a piece of his ass in the worst possible way, you've rather see this job get fucked than him?

Because I don't say it in so many words and the 'only' excuse I can come up with is the growing risk to our lives every minute that we stay in here, the prick ignores me, turns around and announces that he's going to take a leak.

I follow him in to the yard's bathroom because: one, he's not coming out of there until he agrees with me; and two, that bad feeling that's been mushrooming in the pit of my stomach for too long just reached epic proportions and I won't allow him out of my sight for one second. Kind of like a personal enabler of respected virtue. You know, a PERV.

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They say that when you can see them coming, then there's not much you can do. And I so saw this one coming that its not even funny.

The minute I walked in to that bathroom and realized that there was no one else there but me and Dean, I started to get this cold feeling inside my stomach and this insistent voice inside my head screaming 'GET OUT! GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OUT!'

"Dean," I started, ready to just drag him out of there, leak taken or not.

Dean stopped his mumbled cursing about the piss poor idea of putting buttons on jumpsuits and met my eyes.

"What?"

And then we both heard it.

They weren't talking, trying really hard to be as stealthy as they could. They weren't doing such a good job about it. But then again, when you spend your whole life dealing with things that can take stealth in to a whole new level, a supernatural level, your ears get freakishly sharp.

We could hear feet, too many pairs for it to be some random guys just coming in to use the john. Definitely more pairs of feet than just the two guys that I had heard talking in the yard.

Years of dealing with violence and danger gives you, if nothing else, a clear view of things to come that almost borders on precognition.

Dean doesn't need me to tell him what I heard in the yard to know that those feet are coming for us and that they mean trouble. He may not know specifically what their intentions are - and if I have any saying in that matter, he will never know - but he knows that there is only one way out of this bathroom for both of us and that's through whomever is coming.

I can tell from Dean's eyes that he's dying to tell me to get myself out of here the second the chance presents itself, the big brother gene engraved so deeply in his genetic makeup that it stopped being an aspect of who he is and became who he is. I'm glad that he keeps silent, for once acknowledging that I can't turn my back on him anymore than he can.

There's seven of them, all built like bulls, all looking like they've done this sort of thing before, all looking like innocence hasn't been a part of their lives for a very long time.

My eyes catch the glint of metal in the hands of at least four of them. The tactical thought process that our father managed to drill in to us both tells me that those are the ones we need to take out first. I can't decide on a leader of the pack, all of them advancing in a group of equals, or else he would be first on my list.

At some level, where I can still think clinically and cold about this, I wonder what our chances are of actually wining this fight. Dean and me grew up raised by a Marine's corporal, fighting things way more powerful and dangerous than your average Joe. We have training, we have experience and we have each other.

These guys are yahoos, street fighters, brawl-leaches. Still, things like weapons, fighting space and cheer numbers have a tendency to tip the scales, no matter how much more trained and ready you are. None of those are on our side.

They have weapons and their mouths. Which they immediately put to use. The mouths, that is.

If Dean had no idea what their plans were before, he's being given a pretty vivid description of it now, their rough voices and blunt language violating our ears as they tease and taunt Dean with their predictions of who will do what to which body parts of whom.

In the end, it all happens too fast. Despite all the teasing and bad-mouthing, they know that they'll have to move quickly if they want to get their jollies off before the guards wise up to the fact that there's almost a dozen prisoners missing from the yard.

It always looks pretty awesome when you see those choreographed fights in the movies, with cool moves and furniture being crashed under gym-pumped hard bodies and martial arts masters. In real life, a fight between that many people, it's just a mess.

You hit what you can; you hit hard enough to cause enough damaged and save yourself the waste of time of having to strike a second time. It's messy, it's ugly and it's near impossible to keep track of everything that happens. Still, part of my attention was on Dean, tracking where he was and how he was faring. So, I knew the exact moment when he went down, defeated by the sheer number of guys trapping him.

The sight of my brother's arms and legs being grabbed and spread under hungry, horny eyes distracted me for one second too many. It was enough for one of the three guys that I was fighting to get a drop on me.

I remember seeing this fat fist coming towards me, a bright light, blinking and next thing I know, there's that mustached guard leaning over me, shaking my shoulder off its hinges and barking at me to get the fuck up. I can't even remember how I reached the tiled floor.

There's too much adrenaline cursing through my body right then to allow my eyes to actually focus on my surroundings. I was so sure that the guy's punch hadn't been enough for me to black out, but from the amount of things that have changed around me in the mean time, I'm forced to admit that I've probably passed out at some point.

My eyes immediately search for Dean, the last image I had of him still burning in my mind. There are too many bodies wearing orange under these harsh lights and I can feel my eyes water from the assault. I discover that I really hate orange.

My wandering gaze finally finds Dean, just as mustache-guard and some other I haven't seen before, haul me to my feet.

The room tilts around me, but that does nothing to hide the fact that Dean looks wrong. Not wrong in the sense of limbs-bent-out-of-shape-wrong or funny wigs in the head. Its colors, the colors are all wrong. Too white and pasty. A watercolor version of Dean.

Dean's always been on the fair side, turning lobster red whenever he catches too much sun too fast. Now he looks sickly white, not just his face but the whole of him.

It takes me too long to realize that the reason for that has less to do with his skin pigmentation and more to do with the fact that I'm looking at the white t-shirt and boxers he's wearing beneath his jumpsuit.

Dean's head is facing down, eyes tracking the fumbling movements of his hands as he pulls the ugly orange thing up and tries to fasten the buttons. Why was it even down?

I think at the implications of the deranged state of Dean's clothes and my mind just shuts down. There are only so many reasons for a guy's clothes to be off and only one comes to mind right then.

But there was no time for _that_ to have happen. I'm pretty sure that there was no time for anything to have happen at all. Right?

I can still hear my own reply to Dean when those same words were directed at me-- God! Was it only yesterday? - and yeah, given the circumstances, I need a bit more than pretty sure. Right now I need more than really pretty sure, I need fucking scientific proof, tiny germs in a petri dish spelling 'nothing happen' with their tiny germs chromosomes. I need the Pope signing a paper where it reads that it's dogmatic law that my brother's ass remains unfucked!

I can't help but chuckle at the insanity of the thought. The chuckle carries no sound or merriment behind it, just another escape valve for the pressure building up inside my chest.

I don't have a watch in here, but I'm really pretty sure that there was no time for anything more serious than a forced strip tease to happen, right? I listen to myself and almost slap my own face at the idiocy that's leaking from my brain. Like having your clothes ripped apart by a group of violent strangers is a normal occurrence in Dean's life.

Oh God! I can't even consider the possibilities of what might've happen while I was safely unconscious.

Dean finally looks up and carefully avoids my eyes. He's got a matching black eye on the other side of his face and his nose is bloody. In contrast with the rest of him, his face is too red. Not the lobster red, but a more rare shade of red to be seen in Dean's cheek, the embarrassed red.

The only time I remember seeing that particular shade on my brother's face was back when we were kids. Dean was probably thirteen, maybe fourteen, and he'd forgotten to lock the bathroom's door before getting 'friendly' with a skin magazine. Dad walked in on him and jumped right back out, muttering about horny teenagers and shooting hormones with rock salt. Dean's face stayed red 'til the following week.

He' still fumbling with those buttons as the guard pushes him past me towards the door. Only when he's near enough do I realize that the reason he's taking so damn long to get those buttons in to their rightful place is because there aren't any left. Someone must've ripped them off, but I don't think Dean has realized that yet.

The fact that, although he walks by me close enough for our shoulders to brush, Dean still wont meet my eyes, only adds up to my uneasiness.

My gut has turned in to ice and refuses to warm up until I can hear Dean saying that he's all right. At this point I don't even care if it's bullshit, I just need those words coming out of his mouth.

There are more guards standing outside, all other prisoners already back in to their cells.

I never actually met Deacon in person, being in Stanford when dad and Dean ran in to him, but it was easy for me to guess now which one of these guards was dad's friend. I would put my money on the one who turned white when Dean and me walked out of that bathroom. When he came to see what the commotion was, I'm guessing John's sons were not whom he was expecting to find.

I would have never thought that Deacon and the guard that had been beating the crap out of Dean ever since we got here, would be the same person. Guess it makes sense, in a way, to avoid falling in to some kind of special treatment that would blow our cover and his involvement.

I'm sure that the time for caring about covers is past us now, because Deacon announces to his colleagues that he'll be taking me and Dean to the infirmary and that no, he can handle us both, there's no need for another guard's presence.

I guess this is our get away plan. I have no idea how he will ever explain that to his superiors. At this point, I can't really bring myself to care.

He avoids asking about what happened in that bathroom, awkwardly asking me if we actually need to get to the infirmary, his eyes carefully avoiding Dean and his deranged clothes. Dean brushes him off, face a little less red, a little paler and hands still busy tying the arms of his ruined jumpsuit around his waist, trying to keep the whole thing from falling down.

We follow Deacon in to an empty shower room, the decor of the place a little too close on the creepy side to the one we've just vacated and I have to wonder if the goose bumps that suddenly jump to attention in Dean's arms are from the cold or the _dejá vu_.

Deacon ignores that too and gives Dean the message from our lawyer telling where Glockner is buried and he sends us on our way. Even though he's grateful, I can now see that, given the chance to go back, ghost or no ghost, Deacon wouldn't have asked us to come here. I agree with him now more than ever.

We leave an unconscious Deacon there, with the assurance that this ghost will be dealt with and a jaw that's somewhere between scary-bruised and broken, just to make it more real.

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I operate in a semi-hazed state all through the salt and burn of nurse Glockner's bones, glad that at least that we can put behind our backs. Everything else is just hanging over our heads, like a Damocles' sword, waiting to chop them off.

Yemen, for us, ends up being Bobby's place.

Dean insists on driving all the way there. Motels are too risky for us right now and he likes driving the car, so I let him seat behind the wheel, driving and listening to heavy metal for eight hours straight.

I spent half that time trying to find the right words to start a conversation. How do I ask him about what happen? Do I really want a step-by-step recount of what they did? Do I really wanna know how far those inmates got?

From the way Dean's knuckles turn white from time to time, as he clenches his hands around the steering wheel trying to strangle the life out of it, or the way he still avoids making eye contact, I know that those men got far enough. Too far.

This particular cassette reaches the end – Ozzy Osbourne?- and I take that as my cue to say something. I settle for giving him a choice.

"Do you wanna talk about it?" I rasp, voice silent for too long.

"Talk about what?" Dean asks nonchalantly, his eyes never leaving the empty road.

At this point in my life, I really shouldn't be surprise by Dean's amazing abilities of denial, but I still stare at him, astonished. Oh, I don't know Dean, let's talk about the weather, or Super Bowl or the fact that you might have came a bald man's hair away from being sexually assaulted in a freaking prison bathroom. By the way, how's that group grope thing working for you?

"Stuff," I end up saying, swallowing all the rest.

Dean laughs, and that's about the last sound that I would've expected from him right now. It's not even a nervous laugh; it's an honest to God chuckle.

"What's so funny?" I ask, semi-offended to realize that the joke is probably on me.

"You," he says, finally looking at me for more than two seconds, acknowledging that I need to see his eyes to know what he's talking about. "You've been dying to start the mother of all chick-flick moments ever since we left that fucking prison. I'm just amazed that it took you this long."

"It's not a chick-flick moment," I start, hating to use Dean's expression for anything that comes even near feelings. "It's call concern, Dean. It's wanting to know how you're dealing with what happen in there."

"Nothing happen in there," Dean says with such finality in his voice that, if I hadn't been there too, I would've believed him.

"I was there, remember?" I point that out to him.

"You were out like a light. I saw you take that hit," he reminds me in return, his eyes unable to resist the temptation of inspecting my puffy cheek one more time.

His gaze reminds my punched cheek that it's fun to throb in time with my storming heart rate and I decide that it's time to stop pulling punches.

"I heard some stuff in the yard. That wasn't a spur of the moment thing, Dean," I tell. "They were planning on… doing stuff to you."

Dean pause is almost too small to be noticeable, turning the wheel needlessly to correct the car's position on the still empty road. It's enough to make me wonder if, despite his nonchalant attitude in prison, Dean was more aware of what was going on that I gave him credit for.

"You heard it in the yard Sammy? You sure I'm the one you should be concerned about fitting in too much?"

Ah, sarcasm… the final frontier. And now I'm sure that he heard something there too.

"Don't change the subject, Dean. Your clothes were all torn to hell when I woke up. Something happen!"

"Yeah, something happened, Sam! We were in a fight, punches are thrown, clothes get grabbed, old clothes get ripped, shit happens!" Dean says with more passion and vehemence than I've seen him with since we left that bathroom behind. The Impala' steering wheel will never be the same again once Dean's fingers are done with it.

Dean takes a deep breath, knowing from personal experience that yelling won't work one bit with me. Dad tried that approach and only got me to argue harder with him. He's calmer when he speaks next.

"I'm not… it wasn't… I mean, yeah, my jumpsuit got a little worse for the wear but you know prison clothing, Sam… it's all frail and teary… one guy pulled too hard and the whole thing just fell apart… nothing more happen Sam, and that's the honest truth."

I look at him and, sensing my gaze, Dean meets my eyes again, longer this time, allowing his sincerity to be judged. The problem is that Dean's too good of an actor and when he makes the extra effort it gets almost impossible to know when he's bullshitting you.

Only, I'm his brother and I've been dealing with Dean's bullshitting skills literally all my life.

He's the first to look away, using the road as a pretext, even though we both know that this is as empty as a road can get and there's no turns for miles. He clears his throat, a nervous tell that he could never get himself rid of.

"What I mean is that nothing happen in there that I can't deal with, Sammy. It was mostly my pride that got hurt," he admits.

I can tell that the next sentence is ever harder for him to get out because of the deep breath he takes and the furtive look that he gives me.

"It could've gotten a lot worse if you weren't there."

I know it's wrong, but somehow his words fill me with pride. Not because of his acknowledge of my help, which was too little and useless, but because he trusts me. Because it means more to him that I was there to help him than he is embarrassed that I saw him in a moment of fragility. Because Dean doesn't do fragile, doesn't show weakness, doesn't do victim. And this is as close as he'll ever get to admit that he could've become one.

A part of me thinks that, small confession as it was, it was still just too easy. A tooth pulled with almost no effort and I question myself if Dean didn't just admit to ruin the dinner to avoid mentioning the burned down kitchen. I can smell the smoke, I can almost feel the heat of the flames, but I won't call him on it just yet.

I know that this is about as much as I'll get from him now. It's more than I got from him when dad died. It's more than enough for now.

Only thing I can do is to keep an eye open for that 'burned kitchen' and deal with it if it comes to that.

In the mean time, I'll have Bobby and his hot chilly-dogs to help me deal with the rest. And that sounds about right.

The end


	4. ROUGH DAY AT REAPER Inc

**Summary**: From all the times that Dean has crossed paths with a reaper, something had to give.

**Genre**: Episode tag

**Word Count**: 1800

**Rating**: K

**Spoilers**: Everything up to Mistery spot'

**Warnings: **Language

**Disclaimer**: I dreamed that I owned the boys and everything Supernatural related… then I woke up and it was gone.

**Rough day at Reaper Inc.**

So here I was, thinking that I had a lousy job back when I was still breathing. Turns out, not only bad luck CAN follow you in to the afterlife, it can also be a real bitch.

But maybe I should start from the beginning. Well, maybe not from the screaming-out-of-mom's-vagina beginning, because that would just bore you all to tears. And, trust me, that really ain't the reaction I'm going for here.

Sympathy, that's what I want from you. Lots and lots of sympathy.

You'll understand soon enough.

So, from the beginning. The second one.

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The one that came for me was as scary as they get, working the whole dark cloak and scythe act. But then again, in those days, education wasn't such a big deal for those of us who were just born to work the fields. People died in big numbers in those times and I bet they were pretty busy back then. I mean, they're busy today too, with all the natural disasters and natural plaques and the natural Human stupidity…, but that's not really the point. The point is, they needed to collect fast and they needed the poor dying souls to understand who they were without too much drama. Hence the whole cloak and scythe thing. It was almost a PR thing, if they had PRs back then.

I'm talking about the Reapers, of course.

Thomas, that's the name of the one who came for my soul, and in exchange for my last breath he had an interesting proposition for me. Oddly enough, for a man in my position at the time, a job proposition. And between the uncertainty of an existing Heaven or a sure Hell, it really wasn't such a hard choice.

So, I became one of the big Grim' squad. A Reaper. An angel of Death.

It was like introducing a small pond's fish to the biggest ocean you can imagine. Suddenly I could see the big picture for what it really was, suddenly all the answers for my questions (and quite frankly, the answers to a lot of questions I had never thought to ask), were at my disposal. It was a Supernova's birth, it was a soap bubble popping, it was everything and nothing at all in the same breath. All that was ever done or intended, every single thought from the beginning of times to the ones running through your mind just now, were ours to know. I knew it all… and I couldn't tell anyone.

You see, the very first thing that became a part of my new extended knowledge, was the list of rules that all Reapers must obey to. Kind of like Reaper Boot Camp in a blink of the eye. Short list, really, considering.

Only one rule: do not interfere. And that, amidst other things, meant no sharing the big 'truth out there' stuff with any of the souls you collect, because that would influence their choices.

Because they, the ones that we collect, they have a choice. Granted, it isn't much of a choice, but a choice still it is. They can come with us, find out what's behind the wizard's curtain, or they can stay. No body, no existence in almost every sense of the word, no power to influence the world around them and, after a while, no sense of self.

It's a lousy choice if you ask me, which they often do, even if I can never answer (see rule number one), but, still, you wouldn't believe the amount of souls that actually chose that path. I guess that some people simply can't let go. Issues and stuff.

Most of them, more or less scared of the Great Unknown to where we lead them, come willingly and quietly. Not all of us are scary like Thomas and some of us are even somewhat cool, kind of like that City of Angels movie that was made some time ago. You know, we're not Nicholas Cage cool, but close enough.

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Over the passage of time, at least as mortals perceive it, all of us Reapers have collected our number of stories about memorable 'reapings'.

Usually we are randomly picked to go get this or that soul, depending of who's available or who's better with this or that. 'Cause it's all about fairness of treatment and equal opportunity for us. Yes, Sir. We're like a medium sized company, with world wide services. We exist to meet your needs. The add would work too, if the 'needs' being met were never mentioned.

Anyway, all of this to say that, fairness aside, there are some people that we get a higher kick out of reapping than others.

Jebel looked as excited as little kid in a candy shop, or at least as close as we can get of human emotions, when he was summoned to collect Ghandi. That one would've been an honour for any of us.

When we managed to convince Thomas that, despite his gentle soul, he was scary as hell, he volunteered to get Hitler. He ended up getting a kick out of that one just from the scare shitless fact alone. I think he specializes in those sort of bastards this days.

I usually get the young and restless, so yeah, James Dean was me… that Phoenix kid too. Marilyn Monroe was supposed to be me, but there was some sort of confusion and… well, it's a long story for some other time.

And then, of course, there's Dean Winchester. My Moby Dick. My windmill on the hill. The reason for my search for sympathy.

You see, Dean Winchester has become sort of a sore topic around the Reaper's water cooler.

The first time one of us was sent to collect Dean' soul, she was called back. He'd been barely out of his mother's womb when Gloria, who has a knack to deal with babies and very young kids, was sent to collect him. But before she could bring him, the order was cancelled and she returned empty handed. We never knew why, but because the order had come from above, we never questioned it. Sometimes the Big Man just changes His mind.

The second reaper was tricked. Embarrassing, I know, but we ain't exactly all-powerful beings (we tend to leave that to the Boss) and when it comes to the dark arts, we're just as helpless as the next poor smuck. That one was a real mess.

According our book, Dean's time had come, for good this time. Still at a young age, not surprising given what he did for a living, but even so, it wasn't to happen.

The mortal woman controlling that poor reaper, Bob, forced him, first to undo the measures that had been set in motion to cause Dean's death, effectively annulling our right to collect him. And then, like a feeble leaf that shifts direction with every turn of the wind, she changed her mind back and forced Bob to reap Dean' soul. Fortunately her control over Bob was broken before such abomination could proceed, and Dean's life was once more spared.

Tessa was the third one, and she' still recovering from her failed attempt, having been momentarily possessed by Azazel, the pig. Truly, I kid you not!

I should thank her, I guess. You see, from the time Dean reached adult age, he became mine to collect. I was coming for him a month after the electric shock incident and I should've been there for him in that hospital in South Dakota. Tessa was working there at the time, so she offered to reap him. She got that yellowed eye bastard inside her instead.

How something like that could happen, I have no idea. Truly, and I don't get to say that as often this days, but I really have no clue how a demon was allowed to take control of one of us, briefly as it was. The only way for it to happen was if the Boss allowed it, and if that's what happened, again, we don't question it.

Weirder still, Dean was able to see Tessa's true form. Again, that just doesn't happen. You see, each of us chooses an image, a 'work-face' that we use to present ourselves to the collected souls. Most of us use an image close to what we used to look like back when we were living, but never, EVER are mortals allowed to see us for what we are. New policy since the old days. Getting them scared now just complicates our job.

Which brings us to the here and now. Complicated jobs, that is.

I was supposed to collect Dean, for his fourth and hopefully final time, at the end of the twelve months he was given by Shedim, the crossroads seller. Instead, I find myself being called to duty months before that time. And I've been reaping his soul for the past three months. Every. Single. Damn. Day.

I can't do this anymore. The first time it happened, I was there even before that guy pulled out his weapon. I watched, hidden from sight, as the bullet hit Dean's chest, immediately ripping his lung apart. I watched as his brother reached him seconds later, calling for an ambulance that I knew wouldn't be needed. I stood in front of him, allowing Dean to see me instead of the blood thirsty hounds that we both could already hear coming.

I was nice enough to give Dean a few moments to say goodbye to his brother, even after he stopped breathing, using my influence to keep the hell-hounds at bay. He was sort of a celebrity after all.

I thought it'd go pretty smoothly, considering all the trouble that had brood before. I should've known better.

The next day I was being called again. And the next. And the next. Enough is enough!

I know that sooner or later that brother of his will find a way to get us all out of this damned loop, but, honestly, I don't want to do this anymore. That particular soul will never be collected by one of us, and if or when that time does come, the Boss Himself can come and get Dean.

It's been a wonderful gig and I was allowed to meet some really amazing people, dead or otherwise, but I can not go on.

Please consider this as my two weeks notice. I'm sure that I'll be spending them reaping Dean' soul over and over again, and I do wish the best of lucks to whomever comes to fill my place. He, or she, will certainly need it.

The fim


	5. MOUSE AND CAT GAMES

Season 4 is doing nasty things to my imagination. I can't seem able to stop writing. This little piece was just begging to be released ever since I saw last week's episode 'In the beginning'. All because that fantastic cast turned one particular scene, that should've been yucky, in to one hell of a sexy thing. I know I'm going to a special Hell after this, but in the mean time, enjoy!

Warnings: besides the spoilers for epsiode 4.03, there' some bad, bad language and some light mature themes.

Mouse and Cat Games

I like playing with Humans. Taste their fears, taste their tears, feel all those sweet emotions building up and wasting away.

This time, however, it was as much as play as it was plan.

Time moves differently when you don't have a body and an existence of your own. It doesn't move slower, or even faster, just different.

You lose all of that urgency that seems to command the lives of most of the mortals I've played with. Starting now something that would only begin to bear fruits in ten years was as trivial as Humans planning what they should eat for lunch.

And what pleasure I will drive from this meal.

I picked the future parents of my children with extra care. Each and every one of them had to be exactly what I needed. The perfect studs and prized mares, breading my future champions. I wouldn't settle for anything less than that. And among them, I found a pearl.

Sweet, little blond Mary. Always had a thing for blondes.

She wasn't in my initial plans, I'll give you that, but once I set my eyes on her, I knew I had to have her. Good thing her dear old daddy was open to possession as he was. Gave me a sure, easy ride right in to her back pocket.

And that other hunter, the one with the Colt. That piece of crap as been haunting my existence since the day Samuel Colt built the damn thing. And now it's fallen right in to my lap.

I have no idea how that kid got his paws on the thing, but I know that this night will end with his blood on my hands and that Colt in my pocket.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

The best thing about wearing a meat suit? Besides all the screams and the guilt and the angst and the cursing against God? It's playing the 'everything's normal' game.

These people live with one another for years and most of the times, they don't even notice when their love ones are walking around, carrying some extra weight in the form of yours truly. I mean, yeah, they kind of get the clue in when I have their warm guts on my fingers, but by then, you know… too late. That's when I flash them my dashing yellow eyes… just to have one final screw with their heads.

I sit patiently in the house they take me to, all the while laughing inside at the insults my new meat suit is screaming at me. He's truly pissed, especially after I showed him what I was planning to do to his sweet, little Mary. She disappears from the house shortly after we arrive, but I have no hurry. I'll catch her later.

Right now, right now I have the hunter with the Colt in his pocket right in front of me and I'm bidding my time. Playing a little. Having some fun.

There' something different about this boy. He didn't behave like the others when I showed him my eyes, there was no fear, only recognition and I could swear – if I wasn't such an untrustworthy bastard, that is – I could swear that I've never crossed paths with this kid before. I would've remembered it too, because his soul… there's something very strange about his soul. Smells bad. Stings to look at. Very uncanny.

He's gotten me all curious, so I sit patiently as he seems to gather the courage to tell me - excuse me, my meat suit - something of importance.

Five minutes later I'm better than curious, I'm ecstatic. The implications of what he's just told Samuel Campbell are so many that I'm sure that dear, sweet future-boy and his sincere, doe eyes haven't realized them all yet.

I try the safer course of action first and ask him nicely and polite to hand me the Colt. Strangely enough, it doesn't work.

This guy's own daughter and wife didn't notice that he was no longer in command, and yet this kid, who I know for sure only knows Samuel for about less than 48 hours, this kid KNOWS that something's wrong. Sweet!

I'm almost hoping that my telekinetic mojo won't work on him, just to spice up things a little bit, but it does work and soon enough I have future-boy squirming in his chair, back against the wall.

I take a moment to appreciate the view on front of me.

Hot damn! The boy's almost as sweet as his slut of a mother. All full lips and fiery eyes. And all that smell of suffering and pain in his skin… it nearly gives me a hard on and it isn't even my dick.

Lust, thy name is SWEET!

I know that he's telling the truth about coming from the future, making me all tingling with the sensation of success years before it actually happens, and now I know from where he knew me before. My only doubt is if he's one of my pups or just some hunter hell bent on revenge.

From his reactions to my actions, I know that we've danced this dance before. I get just a little bit closer to annoy him further and resist the urge to lick the skin of his sweaty neck. He's not one of mine. I almost wish he was.

But the hatred in those green eyes… it's a thing of marvel from this close. I want to play a little bit more with him before I finish him off. Maybe take those pretty, pretty eyes with me, as a souvenir. Maybe give them to his mother when I return in ten years.

Yes, that will be fun. Baptize his young sibling with my blood and leave Mary this tiny remembrance, as a show of my favoritism.

I'm careful though. I now know what that foul smell on his soul is. The stink of angels and their fluffy little white wings. Yuck! It's like shit baked in the hot sun.

I play my cards close to my vest and distract him with visions of his mother squirming underneath my sweaty, naked body.

He threatens me with bodily harm. Man, that's endearing. This guy is like a tasty ice-cone in the hottest day in Hell. If it wasn't for the smell, I would lick him dry.

I settle for killing his grandparents.

Sweet Mary is waiting for me. Me and Dean, we'll meet again, someday later, maybe ten years from now, maybe more, when he's not so tainted with God's touch.

I can wait.

I'll taste him then.

The end

A.N: For those reading my other story, '66 seals...' I'm working hard on it (except for this little break) and the next part should be arriving somewhere within this week. Thank you for the support!


	6. GMan

Plot bunny planted by laine89 in SPN storyfinders

G-Man

I had never killed anything in my life.

I mean, there was the occasional ant, and a few spiders, one or two creepy crawlers, but anything bigger than that? I just can't.

I literally can't harm a fly, not because I pity them in particular, just because they gross me out when you crush them and they turn in to mush.

And yet, I just put two bullets through a man's chest. Well, a shapeshifter's chest. And silver bullets at that.

And here I was, thinking that working at a bar in Oktoberfest week was bad. Crazy creatures that can turn themselves in to movie monsters and kidnap me to make me his bride trump crazy drunks' any-freaking-time.

I will probably be freaking out about all of this in the morning, but right now? I'm feeling kind of numb. And cold. The dress sure is pretty but in this cold weather, after what I've just been trough… ain't helping.

Dean's eyes meet mine as he gets himself off the floor, dusting his… are those lederhosen?

Mister Dracula sure had some kinks in him.

I feel one feather-light touch on my bare shoulder and before I can bash in the warmth that Dean's hand just spreads all over my body, he's off to help his partner from the floor.

The way they interact is… awkward. Well, not between them, no. That's anything but awkward. But me? I'm starting to feel like a third leg in here, a spare tyre in a car that won't have a flat tyre anytime soon, a… actually, I'm just jealous.

The gentle way Dean holds his partner's head, turning it one side and then the other, searching for blood and brakes. The fingers of one hand that automatically lose themselves in Sam's hair, while the other hand holds his chin so that Dean can look in to his eyes. The chin-hold that climbs up Sam's face, resting his open palm over Sam's cheek. The clinical fingers in his hair that take a life of their own and ruffle Sam's hair.

Dean's head dips down, the angle planned to hide from Sam's view the relief flooding through his face.

I see it though, and the jealousy I feel is not for the care and gentleness that I witness, or the love between them that is plain and evident for all to see. My jealousy is because, no matter how many boyfriends I've had, no one has ever touched me like that.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

We drop his partner back at their motel room (theirs, as in both sleeping in the same room. How did I not get the clue sooner?), some silent communication going on between the two of them that could either be Dean making sure that Sam was actually ok after his crash through the wall, or Sam asking Dean to dump me and just stay there with him.

When Dean walks me to my apartment, we don't talk much. The charged air between us is still there, but now, now I'm not sure if what I'm feeling is his sexual tension, or just tension.

I have to confess, I was kind of confused about the G-man. First words out of his mouth had been a flirt. He hadn't said anything particularly inspiring, no words to sweep me off my feet, but the guy was good looking enough to still pull it off. And then there was the kiss… humm, the man knew how to kiss!

But after seeing his interactions with his partner, I wasn't really waiting for anything to happen. I mean, it wasn't the first time that my gay-meter had been grossly ignored because the man in question was too good to be true and I wanted him to myself. It was just that… well it did look too much like we were in a movie, where the hero takes the damsel in distress home after saving her from the evil monster and they live happily after ever… or at least have wild, crazy sex. Depends on how old the movie is. And it's rating.

Either way, I was starting to believe that hero was kind of in love with the other hero, and the damsel, who had actually ended up killing the monster, who wasn't that evil after all, was going to stay home alone with a bowl of microwave popcorns and a lemon tequila.

I was wrong. I was deliciously wrong.

And the wisest words coming out of my mouth the whole day? 'Do you want to come in?'

As soon as I closed the door behind me, my body was being turned around and pressed back. It took me a good couple of seconds to realize that he hadn't lost his balance and had actually meant to grab me and push me against my own closed door with a hungry thump. When his tongue slip in to my mouth and his hands caressed my breasts over the silk of my new dress, there was no misunderstanding his intentions.

"Can I come in?" He asked in a voice so deep and raspy that it gave me goosebumps all over. The good kind of goosebumps.

I don't usually put out on the first date, but it had been one crazy night, and all of my defenses were down because I though he played for the other team… and the things that his mouth was doing to my neck…

"Right this way, good sir," I whispered back in to his ear, satisfied to see the effect that my breath had on his skin and on… everything else.

His hand was warm in mine as I grabbed it and led the way in to my bedroom. The distance wasn't that far, but, even with the fingers of our hands locked together like they were, Dean managed to slip the dress off of me, his mouth warming the places that the silk had left cold.

When I tried to return the favor he stopped my hands when I started unbuttoning his shirt, covering it with a heated kiss. My hands forgot the shirt and moved south, loosening those ridiculous shorts. The shorts, surprising us both, revealed nothing else beneath.

Apparently the shapeshifter's budget wouldn't go as far as buying prop underwear.

Dean eventually shared his embarrassment at being stripped by the crazy creature; I shared my own tale of how I came to be inside the white dress. The one that had been left on the floor somewhere between here and my front door.

We made each other forget the night's embarrassments and the creature that had caused them. Dean bared his soul to me through out that night and showed me a side of himself so gentle that you would think that this was his first time. He made me feel special and cared for; he gave himself whole to me. But through it all, he wouldn't let me take off his shirt.

0o0o0o0o0o0o00o

They left the next morning. Dean and his brother.

The prick had actually laughed in my face when I asked him about Sam. Because I couldn't bear to actually take Dean in to my bed and be left to wander if it was my name or Sam's that he would be screaming when he came.

With the straightest of faces he had said that Sam was much more than just his partner and that, no matter what, he would always love him. Then he waited for me to take all the wrong conclusions, watched my face turn God knows how many different colors and, just before I could actually kick him out of bed, he actually giggled and confessed that Sam was his kid brother. I wanted to kill him after that.

What ended up happening after that wasn't _that_ illegal, but it would still get a raised eyebrow or two.

The shirt did eventually come off, but only because he thought I was asleep when he got up to take a shower in the morning.

If he hadn't made such a big deal out of it, I would've probably chalk it up to shyness (which he had very little of in bed), or maybe bad skin (which I highly doubted because the rest was… the word creamy comes to mind) or even some sort of deformation, all of which I could have handled just fine. I mean, I'd dated a guy with three nipples and that hadn't been bad at all.

So I spied on him.

I silently watched as he got out of bed bare assed and walked to the small bathroom inside my bedroom, pulling his shirt out as he went. In the morning's twilight, his back looked as smooth and perfect just as the rest of him.

I saw it when he turned on the light.

It looked like burned skin, like a brand. A hand-shaped brand.

I couldn't stop the gasp that escaped my mouth, even though I knew that he would hear me and know. Know that the one thing that he'd ask me to keep to himself, I had taken against his will.

When I managed to drag my eyes off the redden skin I forced myself to seek his eyes, afraid to see the disappointment in those green depths.

There were a lot of things showing in his eyes, but disappointment was far from being one of them. I could see embarrassment, shame, a certain fear of being judged, but mostly, I could see curiosity.

It crossed my mind that I might be the first woman to ever see his bran… his burn.

At the time, I thought that it was just a part of his flirting method, that whole story about his work and his near death experience. Men have come up with weirder stuff to get in to my panties, so, at this point, there wasn't much that I would take at face value. But now, now I could see his story in a whole new light and I knew that it was true.

More than that, I knew that it had changed him so deeply that not even he knew yet how much.

There was no trace now of the courageous man who had stood between me and a Dracula-cross-dresser just a few hours ago; there was no trace now of the passionate and generous lover who had taken me through last night; all I could see was a lost man, looking for some certainties.

I gave in to my own instincts and rushed out of bed to hug him, not wasting time with my own doubts of being welcomed.

There was a certain amount of relief that I could feel cursing through Dean's body as my arms wrapped themselves around his shoulders, my cold skin covering the red, hot mark on his arm.

Relief that I had accepted him as he is.

Relief that I hadn't asked how he got it.

Relief that with or without mark, he was still the same man that I had invited to my bed last night.

I invited him to my shower this time, and showed him just how much his marked arm didn't matter to me.

The end


	7. KNEEL DOWN TO PRAY

Once more, one huge thank you note to Jackfan2, without whom this story wouldn't be half as good :)

**Kneel down to pray**

It's not that I don't believe there's a God. I mean, that's about as possible as the non existence of One… it's just that I always needed a little more than old texts and fantastic stories about long dead people -or fictional people, for that matter- to get in the program.

Not that I don't love those amazing stories. Some of them are like best seller material, blockbusters in the making… _some_ of them actually were.

I mean, who doesn't like to hear tales of courage beyond all human boundaries, of sacrifice, and love, and honor... of ethereal and beautiful beings protecting and fighting for us?

It's just that, without more to go on, for me that's all they are, stories. I don't mean to be such a skeptic, but with so few facts, it puts a real damper on my ability to believe.

One little nudge, one tiny sign that there really _is_ someone out there watching over us and I'm ready to make the jump. I really am.

Seriously, not asking for a flaming bush here, if you get my meaning, just the tiniest of proof that there really is some sort of order to all this chaos, and I'm game. That's all I wanted. That's all I wished for…

You know, someone once said, be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. Well, I was just about to find out that no truer words were ever spoken.

O0o0o000o00o0o0o0

As a kid, for me, Sunday school and going to church were social events, not really religious experiences. I got to dress up, try on the pretty dresses that my Mom got for me and be doted upon. It was all pomp and circumstance, just some place had to go, a weekly appointment at the local congregation. Kind of like going to the dentist, only less painful.

My parents raised me catholic in the strictest sense of the word. I indulged them long enough, went the whole nine yards; baptism (well, didn't actually had much say in that one, being a baby and all), first communion and confirmation, all in hopes of being considered a good catholic. If anything, I had all the right photos to prove it.

However, by the time I was done with my 'catholic education' I was sure I didn't believe in anything anymore.

Now, if I ever described what happened to me the other night as the most religious experience I've ever had in my entire catholic life, my parents would probably never talk to me again. Or have me committed for mental insanity.

Probably both.

0o0o0o0o0o0o00o0o0

The bar where I work is actually nice; not too dingy, just the right amount of wear and tear to give it a certain… personality.

Mostly our clientele is made up of truckers, bikers and drifters. We get the occasional couple or group of friends, passing through on a road trip, but mainly I get stuck looking at dusty, big, hairy and smelly guys. No matter the time of day, they order and I serve beer and shots so full of alcohol they're guaranteed to grow hair on their chests. And trust me, that is something that they don't need.

Some days, it's easy to forget that on occasion, the male sex is actually capable of producing some very nice exemplars. Until the other day, that is, when the two guys came in, right around dinnertime.

I was just pretending to be busy, wiping down the counter for the hundredth time that afternoon, when the carefully studied and preserved gloom of the bar was interrupted by the setting sunlight, coming through the opened door. Just one long strip of golden light that revealed a trail of all sorts of dust specks in the air between the outside and me.

Cut against the bright light, I couldn't see much more than the dark silhouettes of two really tall guys. The image looked like something straight out of some old western movie, so much so that for a second I was actually disappointed not to hear the jingle of spurs as they moved to take a seat at one of the empty tables.

I mean, the shorter one even had cute bowed legs, like he'd just hopped off his horse and left it outside.

Funny thing to notice though… they both move with an effortless grace and purpose that shouldn't be that obvious from just a couple of steps and yet… from just five steps, it was blatantly obvious that these were not the kind of men who spent they're time behind a desk or slumbering at home on the couch.

The fact that they chose the table next to the wall that had the best view of both the front door and the rest of the bar was not lost on me either.

Now, I am a fan of all those cop shows and forensic stuff, and I've seen enough to figure that that table is the best strategic point of the whole bar. I doubt it was by chance that, of all the empty ones, they picked exactly that table… I just hoped that they weren't casing the place to rob us. That would make it the third time this week and I just wasn't in the mood.

The night was off to a slow start, so instead of waiting for Garcia to come out of his hiding place in the kitchen, I went get their order myself. The fact that I was bored out of my skull had nothing to do with it.

I'm used to people stopping their conversation when I get near their table. It's understandable. It's their lives and none of my business whatever they wish to talk about.

I'm not used to people starting to talk as I near the table, just to look like they're having a normal conversation instead of moping in silence like these two were. But I figured, to each his own, and all that.

They both looked like they were in their late twenties, early thirties. And they were both beyond hot. Like GQ hot. It was looking like a pleasant evening already.

They politely stop talking and look up when I greet them and ask for their order.

The one with darker, longer hair, had these cat-like shaped eyes that seemed to change color every time he looked in a different direction and a body that I'm sure would put most renaissance sculptures to shame. For future proposes of any dialogue that I might have with him inside my head, I decided to name him Cat-eyes.

The other one was a nice contrast, with lighter, short-cropped hair and soft angles that gave the illusion of less sharper muscles. The thing that called attention to him, though, wasn't only physical, it was something that I couldn't quite name but it certainly got _my_ attention.

Some people have that kind of aura, you know? You look at them and you know that they're destined to great things. You want to be their best friend; you want to be around to see them do that amazing thing that you know they will eventually do. You want to help them, if noting else, just to feel good about yourself.

Inside, I was already calling him Green-eyes, but this guy had more than the big eyes and the perfect movie-star jaw going for him. There was a sense of gravity surrounding him; an intense pull that drew you to him, something like you would imagine surrounding Ulysses before he went off on his epic journey.

The fact that, only five seconds after seeing him, I was comparing him to tragic Greek heroes was a bit scary, even for me.

And it wasn't like he was even trying to call attention to himself, sitting mostly with his face turned down, studying his folded fingers on the table top, silent. He had briefly looked up when I greeted them, only to return his gaze to its previous downward position, as if the red checkered table cloths were the most intriguing thing in the whole wide world.

The red rimmed eyes and the blotched face didn't escape my notice and I had to wonder what would cause a tough looking guy like that to bawl his eyes out that way.

Because me, I cry over everything and nothing. Clears my sinuses and really, there's nothing to gain in keeping it all inside. Even so, rarely, very rarely do I cry myself to the point of my face looking like that, like… a piece of yourself was ripped from your soul.

Now, I don't live under the illusion that young people are guaranteed to have easier lives, or have no idea of what suffering and pain are. Trust me, I may not be over thirty yet but I've seen and lived enough to know that things don't work that way.

But this story is not about me, or what I might have known or believed before.

Because I believed that what young people do have working for them is the fact that they usually have more energy, a different strength that might lack the wisdom of age but sure compensates in willingness to fight.

And in that tiny, minuscule moment when I looked into Green-eyes and saw a soul too old for his face, I realized that I had it wrong. In those few seconds when our eyes met, I could see a life-time of suffering, a pain so deep that it made me wonder why he wasn't a pile of goo on the floor.

It didn't seem possible that such over whelming despair could exist in just one person without it exploding for the whole world to see.

Those were not the eyes of a young guy willing to fight. Those were the eyes of an old man that was ready to give up.

And then he blinked and I realized that I was rudely staring at him. It was then that Cat-eyes spoke, saving us both the embarrassment of finding an excuse.

Cat-eyes offered me a quick smile and asked for two beers and a bottle of Jack. And, in spite of his politeness and gentle smile, I don't know which was louder, the silent 'please leave us alone' or the 'don't even think about asking' in his expressive eyes.

I respected both requests.

Something was going on with those two, and it was something really bad. Like, terminally-ill bad or funeral-of-a-loved-one bad. You could almost feel it in the air surrounding them, a charged sense of pain and hardship that I usually associate with seriously sick people or war veterans; people who have faced death and hadn't looked away.

War veterans! The thought lit my smart light bulb inside my head. Now it made total sense to me.

Hidden behind the counter, as I filled their beer glasses, I studied the two guys again, adding up what I've seen so far. The way they move, the way they behave... My dad had been in the Vietnam war, was there for a whole month -the longest month of his life, he used to say- came back with out his left leg. And even seated in his wheelchair, I remember how he was always alert, always ready to jump in to action, even if he couldn't jump all that well anymore.

But more than the same sense of permanent alertness, it's the haunted look that I remember best, the same look of loss and taint of embarrassment that I saw in Green-eyes; an imprint left behind when you push yourself to the limit and find yourself lacking.

I could bet that he at least had seen some action, if not in the war then somewhere else as evil and scary. The kind of action that leaves deep scars on you.

God forgive me, but I have a thing for the scarred ones. Call it daddy issues, or even a sickness, but I just can't help it. Twenty-eight years old and I still take home all the stray dogs that I can find.

All of sudden, it makes more sense; their careful table choice, their guarded expressions… doesn't explain their bruised faces, but if know the type, I'm sure they have fuses short enough to get them in to a fight at least once a week.

"Beer's on the house, boys," I happily announce when I place the drinks on their table, proud to have made the connection inside my head all by myself and be able to give something back. When twin looks of confusion stare up at me, I supply, "House policy for all soldiers. It's our way to say thank you for what you guys have been doing for us."

Green-eyes actually pales a little after that, the flock of freckles across his cheeks making him look like a lost boy. The forced smile that he offers me is as fake as they come.

"That's a very nice policy, but we're not soldiers, sweet heart," he says with a practiced flirtation and sexy deep voice. "Besides, my brother here, promised me a full state of drunkenness tonight and I intended to that on his dime."

Despite the fact that it was an honest mistake, I felt myself reddening around the ears, quickly excusing myself to attend to other invisible clients.

I don't usually make mistakes about this stuff, always having prided myself in having a good eye to catch little details and get a good reading on the people that walk in to this bar. I was so sure that they were in the service that is almost embarrassing to realize that I was wrong.

By the fifth beer I realize that Green-eyes was very serious about the getting drunk part, the paying brother not that far behind him. The bottle of Jack is almost at the end and what started as relaxed slouches on their chairs is working now steadily to lying on the table for both of them.

I just hope that they have someone to pick them up when they decide to go home.

It's none of my business, of course, and after that little mishap at the beginning, I sort of avoided their table like the plague. But they're seated near enough to the counter for me to catch wisps of their conversation in between jukebox songs. And the things they talk about are… weird, to put it mildly.

First I thought that they were some sort of religious fanatics or maybe just plain crazy. I mean, who else goes around talking about Hell like it's a real place, or talking about demons and angels like they've just played softball with a couple of them?

I'm this close to calling Edgar, the owner, and let him know that he has a couple of crazies getting drunk in his bar. Or maybe the cops.

I end up calling no one, because the jukebox has been silent for a couple of minutes now and they're drunk enough to get a bit sloppy with their conversation, or rather the monologue that Cat-eyes has been going on for a good while now, the other one doing a good job of half-paying attention, half looking like he wants to be anywhere else but there.

And damn if they don't just suck me in to their crazy talk!

Selling your soul to the devil and making plans with the thing; and not wanting to talk about Hell and what happened there; and confessions of making love to an angel and hating another one; and not doing something wrong even though it is the right thing rather than doing what is right, even if it's bad.

Jumbled words like seals and deals, and brands and blood, and good and evil words that could have a thousand different meanings but seemed to carry such weight and fatality for each one of them.

It's like listening to those fantastic stories that I loved in Sunday school, only some of the angels are not nice and some of the demons are… and Heaven is a dream but Hell is all too real.

Somehow, hearing it told like it really happened, even if they are crazy for believing that, makes it sound dangerous, sexy and deliciously exciting.

God… there must be something wrong with my head…

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

What happen next is kind of fuzzy in my mind. The warm kind of fuzzy, not the kind of blurred fuzzy that you get when you drink way too much and end up not being quite sure how you end up in bed with such a fugly guy… but that's a whole different story.

No, whatever happened to me, I was perfectly aware of what was going on, I wanted what was going on… I just wasn't being the motor force that made the happening, well… happen.

The only way I can describe it is like a thousand voices had entered my mind and lulled me in to a relaxing sleep. And then one voice rises above all others and it was the most wonderful thing I had ever heard.

One second I was in the back room, grabbing some boxes of peanuts, the next there was this warm feeling that started in my stomach and scattered through out my whole body. I felt safe, and protected and… I felt home.

I know it sounds kind of cheesy when I look back and read how I just describe it, but that's exactly how it was.

All those times that my parents, or the priest in our parish, talked about how this or that character from the Bible felt when touched by the grace of God; I imagine this is exactly how they would describe it. Like coming to a warm home after the coldest of nights.

Whoever was responsible for the way I was feeling - because I could feel that it was _a _someone and not some fungus on the backroom's ceiling- whoever it was, explained to me that my help was needed to bring comfort to someone who was in dire need of it. That I could be the vessel to bring peace to a troubled heart.

What do you say, when a voice that only you can hear inside your head, tells you something like that?

I mean, sure, you can decide that you're insane and seek professional help… but what if the gut feeling inside you is right? What if insanity is just the world's way of labeling that which it cannot understand?

When I returned to the front of the bar, everything had changed. Well, maybe not in the eyes of the rest of the world, but certainly for me.

Bob was still in his usual booth, cradling his third beer of the night. After that, he would go to the bathroom, take a piss and wash the smell of alcohol off his mouth.

Now I could see him, arriving home, saying 'Amy, I'm home' and she would kiss him and hug him and ask him how the AA meeting went.

Vince and Larry were still playing darts in the corner, small glasses of shots pilling up in the table nearest to them.

As Vince took aim and shot his dart, I knew that Larry was wandering for the hundredth time when he would find the courage to tell his best friend that he'd slept with his wife and that 'sorry' wasn't even close enough for what he was feeling right now.

The two strangers, the late afternoon cowboys, were still at their table too, Green-eyes pulling his wallet from his coat pocket with clumsy gestures, while the other tries to prevent his own nodding head from falling on the table by supporting it with wobbling arms. Apparently, the brother that had offered to pay the drunkenness of the other is now too drunk himself to tell the difference between money and toilet paper.

I look at them and it isn't the bar that I see. I see a black car, one of those old models, shiny paint reflecting the rustling leafs of the trees above and the light of the noon sun. The two of them are there as well, leaning against the hood, sharing a beer like they didn't have a care in the world.

Only Green-eyes has his face scrunched up like he wants to control the emotions that are leaking from him, tears rolling free and fat down his face and Cat-eyes… Cat-eyes is fighting tears of his own, clutching his beer bottle like he wants to squeeze the alcohol out and beat it with a stick. There wasn't much of what was being said that I could hear and frankly, from the sample I got, I didn't want to hear anymore.

_"I wish I couldn't feel anything Sammy… I wish I couldn't feel a damn thing…"_

And from that sentence alone, the amount of pain and despair that hit was enough to physically knock me off my feet. I landed in a heap of legs and arms, feeling more the warm body that had cushioned my fall than the hard floor where we'd both ended. The same pair of green eyes that had been so filled with emotion in whatever vision I'd just had were now staring at me.

The car was gone, and the rustling leaves were gone, even the tears were gone, but the pain remained.

Staring down at me, Green-eyes looked chagrinned and held out a hand, "I'm sorry… didn't see you there."

I took his hand and gained my feet. It was clear to see he was blaming his less-than-sober self for our tumble and not my staring-off-into-space clumsy self. He was holding two fifties in his other hand, clearly intending to pay and leave.

The feelings that had washed over me in whatever it was I saw before did not match the look in his face now. His eyes were still a bit reddish, tiny blood vessels ruptured all over the white of his eyes like cracks on marble, but now that could easily be blamed on the cigar smoke and poor lighting of this place.

The alcohol had done nothing to dull the pain of before. If anything, it had polished it in to a shiny glare, glinting strong from beneath everything else. And the despair, the same despair of before, was now masked, hidden behind a layer of illusion so thick that I was sure it even fooled him on some days.

I hadn't really given an answer to the mysterious voice before, but now that I understood what and who it was talking about, I had no other choice but to agree to help.

"Best thing that happened to me today," I found myself saying, even if an apology was what I had in mind. "You spend enough time in here and a bump with the right guy can be the highlight of your day," I kept on saying. God, I think that I even winked at him.

It was a strange sensation, my body doing what I wished I could do but wouldn't have the nerve to do before, not after the beers _incident_. I was actually flirting with the guy. Or at least the voice inside me was. Was this how I was supposed to help?

"Then I would say that your day must've been as bad as mine," he said with a knowing smile of his own.

Well, I thought, at least he flirted back, though it felt more reflex than actual attraction. Still, at least it made me feel less ridiculous.

0o0o000o0o0o00o0

We ended up in my house, after my shift was over, and after leaving Cat-eyes, I mean Sam, back in their motel room.

I wasn't really sure where this was all leading… well in all honesty, I knew _exactly_ where this was leading.

It wasn't that hard to tell that all he wanted from me was a warm body and good fuck to help him forget what the booze hadn't been able to… I just wasn't sure how far I was ready to go.

I mean, don't get me wrong, the guy was drop dead gorgeous and on any other night I would've hit on him myself, but tonight… I kept thinking that there was something more to this guy than just looks.

I kept waiting for my mysterious voice to SAY something, tell me what the hell was with this guy and why it had pushed us together, but all I had was silence ever since I got in to the guys' shiny car.

Green-eyes, or Dean, since I finally got his name, well, he was very sure of what he wanted, and boy, did he have convincing arguments…

Soon, this whole thing had taken off with legs of its own and I was quite happy with where it was leading me.

00o0o0o0o0o0o0

It actually led nowhere.

Well, we did manage to get to the naked part; sloppy kisses, roving, hurried hands in between, anxiously exploring the other's unknown flesh, shedding clothes in between. In the wake of our passion, evidence of our need lay scattered about in the form of discarded clothing littering my living room. The mood was set, all the right ingredients were in the pot, the heat was on and we were both more than ready to get to the sweaty part… until I decided to be artistic and put my hand over a peculiar hand-shape scar on his left shoulder.

He just froze.

Honest to God. Up to that point, his delicious lips where doing unspeakable things to my body, then I could feel the moment he actually stopped breathing. At first I thought that it was that nasty bruise he had on the same shoulder, figuring that my touch had been painful to him. But it wasn't that.

And that's when the voice returned. Only now it wasn't just in my head, it was in my mouth as well.

"Its ok, Dean," I heard myself saying. "I'm very glad that you decided to talk to Sam."

Startled, Dean pushed away from me. I would've been offended if I wasn't as confused and surprised by those words as he seemed to be.

"Who are you?" He asked, as if I hadn't introduced myself already. Well, I had, but in his defense, the voice inside me hadn't.

"This is not your mark of shame, Dean… this is the sign of your redemption," my voice went on as I caressed the hand-shaped burn in his skin. Deep down, I knew that she was telling the truth. "You should grant yourself the same forgiveness that God has already given you."

Dean was shaking his head and somehow I had no doubt that he was denying my words, not the insanity of the situation. I had no idea what had happened to him, only that it had been bad –like Biblical bad- and that, apparently God had a personal interest in this man.

And if that was true… God, I felt kind of bad, like the evil serpent luring the pure man out of Paradise, as if, without knowing it, I was somehow tainting an innocent being with my lustful touch.

I started to wonder if their talk at the bar was that crazy after all. And if their talk wasn't a product of insane minds, then what had I gotten myself in to?

I started to wonder exactly what was the voice inside of me, and if I should even listen to her anymore.

The same feeling of rightfulness and calm that had lured me in to this situation returned, assuring me that this was exactly what this man needed and that no harm was being done here. From the look on Dean's face, I'm not sure if he would agree, but I couldn't bring myself to believe that a voice so gentle and sweet could do anything evil or wrong. It was kind of like trying to picture a new-born baby with a Uzi... so unreal that it was even comical.

"You have no idea of what I've done… you would be disgusted if you ever did," he whispered. Avoiding my eyes, he pushed himself against my bed headboard, knees drawn tight against his chest, like a physical barrier against the truth.

A sudden urge to hold him tight and protect him came over me, no matter how ridiculous that might look. Me, a tiny little thing of barely five two, protecting a guy who was almost twice my size. And yet, he looked so small and… breakable right now.

"I know what you did, we all know how you behaved," I kept on saying, glad that the voice actually knew what to tell him. "In His eyes, you were never at fault, even when… even when you enjoyed it."

I had no idea of what I was talking about, but I wanted to kick myself just from the reaction that those words got from Dean. If possible, he squeezed himself even smaller, his eyes growing wide with fear. Fear of his darkness coming to light, fear of being judged.

"How… how can you possible know that?" He asked, his voice laced with self-doubt and recrimination. "How can you possibly forgive me, _knowing_ that?"

"We are all part of the same light, Dean… what you know, we know," I heard myself saying, "and we know that it wasn't the suffering of others that brought joy to your heart in that dark place… it was the absence of your own suffering that you were celebrating."

Without a conscious thought behind it, I saw my own hand reaching out and smoothing the short, soft hair in his head. Like a beaten dog, desperate for affection, I could feel him lean against my touch with the barest of movements. I doubt he even knew he was doing it himself.

"Who could ever blame you for that, Dean?" The voice asked, and me with her. "What kind of Father would not forgive one of his children for that?"

I felt him tremble against me and I moved closer, offering my body not for sex now, but for the comfort that he seemed to crave even more. I could feel tears against my shoulder, where his head was resting and even with out knowing who he was, or what dark, unforgivable things he had done or which horrible place he had been, I felt myself crying with him.

"Who are you?" He asked again after a while, when his tears run out and I would swear that he was asleep. "I feel like I know you… and please don't say Castiel, or I might have to bleach some parts of me that I hold very dear…"

Though I had no idea of whom he was talking about, the image of young guy with gentle yet, piercing blue eyes, appeared in my mind. Castiel, I figured.

"Castiel has an important mission with you… he would not compromised it like this."

"Urrrg…" He grimaced, "Uriel?"

Again, a flashing image of a large, black man came to mind. Who were these people? And why did I have the feeling that they weren't even people?

"Uriel is not amongst the most favorite right now. He has… misbehaved against his superiors and is learning his place."

"Anna?" Dean asked hopefully, raising his head from my chest and looking in to my eyes, like he was searching for something.

That was the one name that didn't produce any sort of image. But from the warmth I felt growing and the feeling of pure happiness that the being inside of me shared, I knew that Dean was right. "I guess you can still call me that."

"I figured that you would never be allowed back here," he said. "I figured that you would forget everything once you went back in to being a big time angel."

Wait? A what?!

"There are some things that I could not forget, some things that I wanted to remember… like chocolate cake," I said and even though I could feel that this was some kind of private joke between the two of them, I didn't feel left out in their joy.

"Or sex… even if you can't feel it now," Dean said back, with a mischievous and yet lost look in his eyes that only made me regret not meeting him before, some time sooner than now, when he wasn't feeling so broken.

When I could've been more to him than a means to an end.

"Wait... is she a... vessel, like the others?" Dean asked, as if he had suddenly realized that we were both naked and lying in my bed.

It slightly pissed me off that he would talk like I wasn't even there, but then again, I kind of wasn't. The… angel's voice dimmed and allowed me to answer for myself. "I'm not a vessel," strange word, whatever he meant by that. "I'm more like the most awesome voice mail service ever," I said with a wink, my wink this time, because I wanted to put him at rest on the whole possessed/not possessed thing. I was even a bit surprised with myself, because this whole thing? Should be freaking me out beyond all scales.

Dean seemed to settle with that answer, somehow realizing that it was really me and not _Anna_ talking to him then. I felt him relax against my chest once again. He seemed to like that spot.

When I spoke again, the… angel's voice was back in charge. Apparently, she hadn't said all that she wanted yet.

"There are some things that I can still feel, some things are ok to let yourself feel-"

"Anna…"

"There are some things that you should let yourself feel, Dean… they will help you heal," I said, putting my arms around him and hugging him tight. He melted against my arms, against _Anna's_ embrace. "You deserve to heal, Dean," I whispered, feeling like I was saying goodbye.

And then, just like that, the peaceful light that I had felt inside of me to that point, was gone. It left behind the warm feeling of safety that I knew was as much for Dean as it was a gift to me, for allowing this being, this angel, _Anna_ to have one last moment with this man.

It was a feeling that kept us warm and cozy until the next morning, when he went away. It is a feeling that I will never forget.

0o0o00o0o00o0o0o0o0

I know that everything that I've written here will never be shown to anyone, because, seriously, who would believe it? Even so, I had to get it off my chest.

I don't really need anyone to know. It's not even the sort of thing that you share with your best friend. But it is the kind of thing that changes you. Changes your view of the world.

Now, when I go visit my parents and they drag me out to church with them, I can enter that cold, stone place and feel like I'm visiting old friends, wondering if maybe Castiel, or Uriel, or even Anna are around, watching over us.

Now, when I kneel down to pray, I know that someone really is listening and that, even if I don't get what I asked for, I know that it is ok to just talk and be there. To let yourself let go and feel everything.

And if nothing else, if all I ever did was pass on an important message from an angel to her mortal friend, it still left me with a wonderful feeling of having helped someone.

And that aura of being destined to great things? With Dean, I now know that I was totally right!

The end


End file.
